The EXO-200 detector, part I: detector design and construction

/ Authors

M. Auger, D. Auty, P. Barbeau, L. Bartoszek, E. Baussan, E. Beauchamp, C. Benitez-Medina, M. Breidenbach, D. Chauhan, B. Cleveland

and 71 more authors

R. Conley, J. Cook, S. Cook, A. Coppens, W. Craddock, T. Daniels, C. G. Davis, J. Davis, R. DeVoe, A. Dobi, M. Dolinski, M. Dunford, W. Fairbank, J. Farine, P. Fierlinger, D. Franco, G. Giroux, R. Gornea, K. Graham, G. Gratta, C. Hagemann, C. Hall, K. Hall, C. Hargrove, S. Herrin, J. Hodgson, M. Hughes, A. Karelin, L. Kaufman, J. Kirk, A. Kuchenkov, K. S. Kumar, D. Leonard, F. Leonard, F. Leport, D. Mackay, R. MacLellan, M. Marino, K. Merkle, B. Mong, M. Díez, A. Müller, R. Neilson, A. Odian, K. O'Sullivan, C. Ouellet, A. Piepke, A. Pocar, C. Prescott, K. Pushkin, A. Rivas, E. Rollin, P. Rowson, A. Sabourov, D. Sinclair, K. Skarpaas, S. Slutsky, V. Stekhanov, V. Strickland, M. Swift, D. Tosi, K. Twelker, J. Vuilleumier, J. Vuilleumier, T. Walton, M. Weber, U. Wichoski, J. Wodin, J. D. Wright, L. Yang, Y. Yen

/ Abstract

EXO-200 is an experiment designed to search for double beta decay of 136Xe with a single-phase, liquid xenon detector. It uses an active mass of 110 kg of xenon enriched to 80.6% in the isotope 136 in an ultra-low background time projection chamber capable of simultaneous detection of ionization and scintillation. This paper describes the EXO-200 detector with particular attention to the most innovative aspects of the design that revolve around the reduction of backgrounds, the efficient use of the expensive isotopically enriched xenon, and the optimization of the energy resolution in a relatively large volume.

Journal: Journal of Instrumentation

DOI: 10.1088/1748-0221/7/05/P05010